Throughout this cold and white New York winter, I’ve had Beach House’s Teen Dream on heavy rotation. The band’s towering second album feels like a fitting complement for the mood shift between the picturesque beauty of falling snow to the subsequent nasty slush and wet toes (at least before the Bean boots get laced up). The lead single, “Norway”—with its tales of sleep, wooden houses, and lonely hearts—serves to provide an accessible shelter from the dark. A sort of hot toddy in the midst of a blizzard.

Pause.

Then I went on vacation and took this long player with me to a catamaran in the Carribean. The same songs that sound-tracked my cold and bitter journeys around an over-congested island city effortlessly became sun-kissed jams for treks around barren islands. In between cannonballs, cervezas and avocados, “Take Care” (the album’s closer) introduces tales of swimming, snakes and selflessness—all very good things to have on a little spring break.

http://www.myspace.com/beachhousemusic

Lazy and lustful, lewd and lovelorn, The xx tend to ebb and flow, rather than crash and burn. The London band’s sparse, spacey sounds are highlighted by the interplay between Oliver Sim and Romy Madley-Croft’s soft, blunted vocals. Each singer’s voice serves as a façade, obscuring emotions that linger below: chancing, wanting, twirling, seeking, wasting. The self-titled, self-produced debut album,released on Young Turks, an XL imprint, is a timely soundtrack for current happenings: seasons changing, people dying, and things falling apart. On “Infinity,” when Madley replies to Sim’s pleadings with a dire “I can’t give it up” (as the background percussion spills into the foreground), it feels like she is clinging to a muted hope, which may well die as the song fades to black. Other times, particularly on “Hot Like Fire,” an Aaliyah cover, the sexual tension in the vocals creeps up against airy, empty spaces to convey a salient vulnerability. Baria Qureshi and Jamie Smith, the quartet’s other two members, are unsung heroes who set the pace with reverb-heavy guitar, straight-forward keyboard melodies, and minimal-by-necessity production. The video for “Basic Space” (the second single, and among the album’s more upbeat, sassy tracks) was directed by Anthony Dickenson, and features prolonged light exposures that highlight the sound’s subtlety. Go see The xx play at Mercury Lounge on October 21 and at the Bowery Ballroom on November 11th.

www.myspace.com/thexx